Ethnography 101

Some of us at Engine are getting ready for a very intensive series of ethnographic studies for the Southwark Rise Project, set up to compare Southwark Council's support provision with the end experience of users, and to establish a framework for developing a user-centred approach. Ethnography is the practical end of anthropology and involves immersing yourself in the environment, community, society or culture you are observing and recording very qualitative information regarding how people live their lives. It often uses film and photography to quickly document the subjects without interfering with their natural habits and asking too many questions. It's somewhere between Lois Theroux and a human safari.

Ethnography is powerful because it offers so much qualitative detail on people, creating a compelling and personal account of people's everyday lives. In order to capture everything in its immediacy, from the contents of someone's fridge to a family argument, film, photography, sound recordings and even sketches are often used. This rich visual evidence adds to this power and reality when presented back.

Thankfully for those of us who are less experienced in front line ethnographic research, the studio has been sharing some advice and resources. Here's a summary of what I (and you) may find useful when planning, carrying out and reviewing front-line ethnography.

Erick gave me a really entertaining (if a bit long) movie of Luis Arnal's experiences as an ethnographer, reinforcing a sound set of principles and ethics with some great anecdotes which was presented at IIT last year. He had a simple illustration of the paths of conversation in an interview, probing and branching and gradually becoming more productive:

Empathy - with both participants and clients
Teamwork - briefing everyone and making participants feel on your side, create a buzz
Creativity - reacting quickly and finding a way to get people to open up
Discipline - observing the social code (Arnal covers everything from high society to the favelas)
Courage - know your rights, coping with emotionally demanding research
Social Responsibility - follow an ethical code, all work should improve people's lives, don't engage participants but leave written recommendations; don't keep them
Passion - believe in the project (see Social Responsibility!)


RECOUP, the Research Consortium on Education Outcomes and Poverty provides a useful checklist to prepare you for ethnography and the process of disseminating and discussion what you've seen. The full manual can be downloaded here.

And finally a list of the great and the good, from beginnings of armchair anthropology based on archeaology and 'collecting' exotic material items to what we now see as ethnography.

Franz Boas - developed a theory of cultural relativism, rather than seeing culture as an evolutionary line
Bronislaw Malinowski - participant observation pioneer
Marcel Mauss - worked on reciprocity and gift exchange
Claude Levi-Strauss - structuralism and mythologies

I'm itching to get out into the field now!

Criminal Designerminds

The Design Council with help from Live|Work have been working on a project to 'design out crime'. The site is filling up with examples of systems and product re-designs that have help make crime or theft more difficult or less appealing, summarised in this Pdf.

The project takes a number of approaches, from encouraging public vigilance to co-ordinating manufacturers to make products more difficult to sell on (Schools requested that equipment was made bright orange to stem a tide of thefts)

When beginning such a design process, it's easy to talk to, observe and design around the experiences of the victims and also to look at the official data to see which may be the most fruitful areas to tackle. However, I'm intrigued by 'anti-user-centred design' instances like this, where designers have to make a situation as un-appealing or difficult as possible for one user group whilst not compromising the experience for legitimate users. So shouldn't that user segment be included in the process?

At a recent conference I spoke with Thinking Spaces about their work with prisons. When interviewing inmates, they always found the armed robbers and fraudsters the most interesting to talk to.
Such criminals have the potential to be excellent designers. They can spot opportunities, think quickly and laterally and some have proven to be expert systems analysts and exploiters. Their ingenuity is often borne of necessity and from the ground up.


A fantastic example of product design involves an acquaintance's mother, who lived in a flat with a coin-operated electricity meter that was checked every month to be emptied but was always found to have no coins in it at all, despite energy being used. The flatmates had created a ice tray with pound coin sized holes and were dropping these ice "slugs" (fake coins) into the meter, where they would melt and evaporate!



After a mugging, I had a hopeless series of experiences with Lewisham Police, and after six weeks I was finally invited in to identify any of the eight strangers I met late at night in a stressful circumstance. Needless to say I didn't manage to recognise anyone, but I did encounter some excellent resourcefulness to play the identification system.

Mug shots are so-called because the suspects being photographed used to gurn to distort their faces to avoid identification. Amongst hundreds of photographs of frowns and straight faces I was taken aback by someone leaning towards the camera with a beaming smile! The chances are that if he had done anything wrong, he didn't have quite so happy a demeanour at the time!

So if you truly want to attempt to 'design out crime' I'd recommend starting with those who have committed crimes to understand the motivations, drivers and barriers that can make the rest of us so unhappy, but also to harness the creativity and ingenuity of their unique and underestimated perspectives.

Just Coping

Esro have produced a insightful report written by Sophia Parker and Robin Pharoah with Tamara Hale on their ethongraphic research into families on the borders of poverty, in partnership with Kent County Council and the SILK lab, set up by Engine. It takes a thoroughly qualitative stance, but the stories used and rawness of the situations of the participants of the research makes for incredibly compelling reading.

It is positioned as a policy development guide, with the end experiences of those 'just coping' in mind, rather than a top-down set of guidelines and approaches. Essentially, this user-centred report puts people before statistics.



The book is inspiring both in the insights it picks out, and also its ability to force to you question your pre-conceptions about people living 'on the breadline'. From some very harsh case studies, there is hope built on the observations of the researchers that the subjects are incredibly entrepreneurial and resourceful, in order to make the best of what they have.

There are also some blatant flaws in the systems and services of local government, which although are set up to protect and support people struggling to make ends meet, can in fact obstruct that very goal and turn vulnerable situations into spirals towards much more serious ones.

Key insights include:

No matter who you are, poor people are always seen as 'other'. No-one wants to admit that they are in that bracket, which would be seeming to concede that they are not trying to get out of poverty.

Prevention strategies can be much more effective both in costs for the providers (councils and national government departments such as the job centre and benefits) and in the experiences of the users, who hopefully can get support in avoiding worse situations before they arrive at them. (Surprise surprise)

Preconceptions of others who are not in poverty (the general public). There is an interesting comparison made to the purpose of the 1970's disability social model, which "demanded that economic, environmental and cultural barriers were recognised as constituting the disability as much as the condition itself."

Putting children first. The book contained some powerful examples of children who were growing up before their time, with responsibilities and situations they should not have to be forced to cope with. However, parents commonly will do whatever they can to ensure their children get the best 'life chances', even if that means skipping meals to ensure their child can get a new school uniform or take the bus to school.

The book ends with a number of opportunities and system challenges to realise them, and calls for a 'Copernican shift' in the way services are delivered, from a top-down approach, to designing services from the ground-up. It can be downloaded for free here.